


Partners in Success

by doomed_spectacles



Series: Spooky Omens: 13 Days of Halloween! [8]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hell, Humor, Original Character(s), Ouija, POV Original Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:28:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27209638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomed_spectacles/pseuds/doomed_spectacles
Summary: A demon named Ouija is summoned for his first-ever performance review in the Ministry of Torments department.
Series: Spooky Omens: 13 Days of Halloween! [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1978405
Comments: 12
Kudos: 22
Collections: Genuary 2021, Racket’s 13 Days of Halloween





	Partners in Success

**Author's Note:**

> Racket's 13 days of Halloween, day 8: Ouija!
> 
> Back to silliness! Maybe one day I'll write something properly spooky.
> 
> NOTE: It's unclear which pronouns Dagon uses. The Good Omens wiki says he/him but it's unclear where they sourced that. I've used he/him here.

“Sit down.”

“Thank you.” The demon looked around with curiosity. He’d never been in Dagon’s office before. It stank of fish. There were no windows and each of the lights on the ceiling was tinted a slightly different color. Two of them flickered but never at the same time.

“So, Ouija,” Dagon said, drawing out the syllables like they were dragging past a hook in his mouth. “What exactly would you say you do here?”

Ouija cleared his throat.

“Well, you see, I, uh- that is.” Ouija took a deep breath. He had prepared for this in the mirror for the past month. His mirror was cracked and slightly haunted though, so it’d been a little difficult. The spirit in it had given him some decent tips. He squared his shoulders and faced his supervisor — project confidence, that’d been his haunted mirror’s advice.

“My department, the, um, Ouija department is a department of one, really.” He chuckled and it only had a slightly nervous bent to it. “I’m in charge of the board. There’s a board, you see, it’s named for the department and so am I. Let me start over.”

Dagon stared at him, unblinking.

“The board was conceived about a century ago. The humans, they believe it summons spirits. Evil spirits, good spirits, dead relatives, pets, etc. Really it summons me!” Ouija grinned, but the smile was not returned. He cleared his throat. “I provide messages from the beyond, nudging humans this way and that. A certain percentage of them really believe in it and those that do are… pliable.”

In his pocket, Ouija felt an electric shock. He wished, not for the first time, that he’d implemented the vibrate feature instead of the shock feature.

“You see,” he said, holding up his device, “this shows me when the board is being used.” He dragged a slimy finger across the screen. “There’s a group of children in Cleveland wishing to speak with a dead dog.” He tapped out a suitably spooky but PG-rated response. The device sent out another shock and this one went all the way through his hand. He transferred the device to his other side and shook out his stinging hand. “And a group of co-eds in Virginia wants to know who among them are virgins.”

He set the device on Dagon’s desk, which was actually an old door on top of two rusty metal file cabinets. On the surface were scattered stacks of papers and an overflowing outbox. There was no inbox, which made one wonder where the papers came from in the first place. Hell had until recently used a system of pneumatic tubes for administrative paperwork and the grungy outlines where they had been installed were visible on the wall.

Dagon’s eyes meandered slowly to the file in front of him.

“This is your first performance review since your position was created, yes?” Dagon didn’t look up, though he’d asked a question.

Ouija nodded. He’d been a one-demon department for over a century, and he’d been wondering for decades whether Infernal Resources had forgotten about him. He was glad to hear Dagon dispense with the double-speak and call this what it was — a performance review. The meeting had been titled ‘Partners in Success’ on the calendar invite, which appeared as a red-hot brand with the date and time on his arm — there was no option to decline.

“It says here you were in the Eternal Hurricane on Level Two before this. What made you want to join this department?”

Ah. A softball question. One designed to give the subject time to talk themselves up and flatter their supervisor. Ouija could handle that. He’d practiced with the spirit in his mirror, who’d gotten a little too flattered, in his opinion.

“Well, as much as I appreciated the opportunity to fan the flames of desire in the wicked and lustful, the, uh, _eternal_ nature of the eternal hurricane meant that there was very little opportunity for advancement.” Ouija wiped his palms on his trousers. His supervisor’s office was very damp despite no obvious sources of moisture. “And frankly, sir, the reputation of the Ministry of Torments is quite impressive.”

“Yes, it is,” Dagon said flatly. Ouija continued.

“I’ll admit, when the requirements of the position were communicated, I really wasn’t sure what to make of it. But I thought to myself, self, if you’re going to get ahead, there’s going to be risk involved.” Ouija sat up straight, proud of himself. He adjusted his glasses. “So I put my name in and was chuffed when it was selected by the board. Here I am, one hundred and twenty-nine years later.”

“Mmmm.”

Ouija gulped as his device sent a shock through the surface of the desk. Someone in Florida was trying to use the board to find a relative who’d been killed during an exceptionally badly planned robbery of a Mexican food restaurant. But his device was on Dagon’s desk and he couldn’t exactly ignore his boss to check it and respond. He hoped the disappointed customers wouldn’t go on the internet to complain.

“I think I forwarded the sales projections to you last week,” Ouija said. “The sales-to-souls ratio has steadily increased over the past decade." He smiled. The spirit in his mirror had said he should smile, despite the fact that his mouth was smaller than it should have been and the effect made him look like a face drawn on a horrifying flesh balloon.

Ouija had actually been hoping to get an assistant to help keep track of the cease and desist letters he sent to knockoffs. Copyright infringement was an increasingly complex area of case law and he really didn’t have the time to keep up on it while maintaining day-to-day summonings. Ouija board sales had reached an all-time high in the past decade but he was increasingly stretched by the high-tech versions the demon Crowley had pushed him to implement. Now he was getting hormone-soaked teens to shiver in fear and arousal by summoning the ghosts of Victorian twin children around-the-clock. No rest for the Ouija.

“Black Friday is looking quite good this year, especially since everyone is stuck at home. I’m working with the Satanic Panic folks over in Marketing to see if we can drum up another scare but they’re a little overloaded at the moment, what with, well, _America_.”

Dagon drummed his fingers on the desk. His expression didn’t give anything away other than a cool dislike. Ouija was pretty certain that was just Dagon’s face, though, and tried not to take it personally.

Ouija cleared his throat.

“It says here that your… project… really only took off after 1973. Why?”

“Oh, well, yes,” Ouija stammered, “that was my first cross-departmental collaboration. The Entertainment Division really pulled out all the stops on the Exorcist movie, you know, and I was really just happy they let me be involved. All the credit goes to that team - fantastic work over there, really.”

“If they deserve all the credit, then why do you deserve a raise?”

“Umm-”

Dagon smiled and Ouija thought he could spot at least three rows of teeth.

“Settle down, Ouija. Your soul procurement is solid.” The device on Dagon’s desk buzzed several times, sending a series of shocks through the desk. Dagon shivered, then got a glazed look in his eyes that Ouija didn’t want to think about. He shook his head, then slid a damp piece of paper across the desk.

“Here's your new benefits package. It includes a three percent raise.”

“That's-”

“Also dental is no longer included. Underwriting says it's not worthwhile to keep coverage since so few demons have teeth and the ones that do have too many.” Dagon frowned. It might have been a frown — Dagon’s mouth tipped downwards but the rest of his face remained exactly the same. Ouija couldn’t get the image of a fish with a hook in its mouth out of his head.

“But- okay, I guess.”

“And I'd take a look at your stocks if I were you. Cooperation with our former nemeses threw the Infernal markets off.” Oujia nodded. That made sense. He’d been secretly glad to see Armageddon come and go. He was very good at titillating teenagers — not so good at fighting.

“I see. Wait- the infernal inflation rate is six percent.”

“And?” Dagon steepled his fingers. He narrowed his eyes, which really just made them look more normal in proportion to his face.

“And we got a three percent raise. So-”

“Are you lodging a complaint, Ouija?”

“No,” Ouija said quickly. He gulped. His financial portfolio would take a hit, but then again, he didn’t really have anything to spend money on. The Infernal Markets were ruthlessly competitive and as far as he could tell, only a handful of demons ever broke even. He wasn’t exactly sure what the point of Hell having a stock market even was. No one had ever explained it but Ouija wasn’t about to question. Asking questions was a great way to find yourself back on whipping duty in the bolgia on Level Eight — carpal tunnel was rampant among the whipping demons on Level Eight.

“Good. See you at the next review. Shut the door on your way out.” Dagon swiveled his chair away from Ouija with a tired squeak. The chair rotated a half-turn away, then stopped, leaving him staring at the corner.

As Ouija was halfway out the door, Dagon called him back. “Ouija?”

“Yes?”

“We'll consider your request for an underling. Expect a response in three to five years.”

Ouija breathed a sigh in relief as he left his supervisor's office. All things considered, he could’ve done much worse. Even a drip of slime falling on his shoulder in the hallway couldn’t dampen his spirits as he looked forward to telling his mirror how well he’d done.


End file.
